【轉載】All forty Chechen rebels had had more than ENOUGH time to realize that the hall was being filled with toxic gas BUT they did NOT open fire on the hostages or kill them with grenades. After the FSB'S storm, all Chechen rebels had BEEN killed. BUT in the theater, MORE than eight hundred unconscious hostages were slumped in their seats or lying in the aisles, finding it difficult to breathe.

The evacuation of the hostages took place amid chaos. In the ABSENCE of medical personnel, police and soldiers draped the bodies of comatose hostages over their shoulders or carried them out by the arms and legs. Bodies were piled one on top of another outside the theater entrance, with NO attempt to separate the living from the dead. Although the medical authorities had had days to prepare for the aftermath of the siege, there was a shortage of ambulances, and hostages were taken to hospitals in buses, microbuses, and cars. MANY died as a result. Mr Alexander Karpov, a well-known songwriter, died after spending seven hours alive in a bus packed with corpses. A thirteen-year-old girl was crushed under the bodies and died on the way to a hospital.

The Less You Know, the Better You Sleep: Russia's Road to TERROR and DICTATORSHIP under YELTSIN and PUTIN

【轉載】The gas was NOT identified for the rescuers, who were forced to spend several hours testing antidotes before they found one that was effective -- naloxone, which is used to treat heroin overdoses. BUT the discovery came TOO late to save many lives. The confusion continued at the hospitals, where hundreds of hostages suffering exposure to an unknown toxic gas suddenly appeared, overwhelming the hospitals' ability to treat them. PUTIN'S FSB, apparently AWARE that the death toll was going to be shocking, initially DELIBERATELY understated the fatalities ... The final official death count for the hostages from the toxic gas was 129.

The Less You Know, the Better You Sleep: Russia's Road to TERROR and DICTATORSHIP under YELTSIN and PUTIN
Author: Mr David SatterPublisher: YALE UNIVERSITY PRESS

【轉載】In the months after the Nord-Ost attack, family members and survivors began to demand answers from PUTIN. The first question concerned the identity of the toxic gas. PUTIN'S cronies would say only that the gas had been a calmative opiate, a derivative of fenatyl delivered in aerosol form. The precise chemical was NEVER identified. According to some sources, the agent was Kolokol-I, an incapacitating gas developed in a Soviet military laboratory in the 1970s that carries a HIGH risk of death.

This question was NOT trivial. Many of the survivors were SERIOUSLY ill, and WITHOUT knowing the identity of the poison, doctors did NOT know how to treat them. In April 2003, a lawyer representing some of the former hostages said that approximately forty more had died since October 26, 2002. In October 2003, the newspaper Versiya, summing up the results of its own investigation, said that about three hundred of the former hostages were now dead.

The Less You Know, the Better You Sleep: Russia's Road to TERROR and DICTATORSHIP under YELTSIN and PUTIN
Author: Mr David SatterPublisher: YALE UNIVERSITY PRESS

This is PUTIN (7)【轉載】On September 30, 2003, in answer to questions from journalists, PUTIN deviously said that the gas was "harmless" and denied that it caused the hostages' deaths. They had died from long periods of immobility, PUTIN said, and from chronic diseases. BUT experts from the Center for Catastrophic Medicine concluded that the deaths were caused by exposure to a "HIGH concentration of a chemical substance."deviously 欺詐地Catastrophic 大災難的；大災禍的concluded 斷定；決定；推斷出；作出（結論）exposure 接觸；面臨；遭受PUTIN (1-7) are adapted from:The Less You Know, the Better You Sleep: Russia's Road to Terror and Dictatorship under YELTSIN & PUTINAuthor: Mr David SatterPublisher: YALE UNIVERSITY PRESS Many thanks for your scrupulous attention !

【轉載】PUTIN'S intention, however, was to create a system in which the regime exercised total power. In his inaugural address May 7, 2000, PUTIN said that "the head of the government (i.e. PUTIN) was always and will always be the person who answers for everything." In fact, even under the 1993 Constitution, which created the superpresidency, the president did not answer for everything. Parliament was responsible for making laws, and the courts for the administration of justice. PUTIN said that he would be guided "only by the interests of the state." This too was a departure, because Russia is ostensibly a democracy in which the government answers to the people. The promise to be guided only by the interests of the state (i.e. PUTIN'S OWN interests) was implicitly a claim to ONE-man rule. On foreign policy, PUTIN said it was important to defend Russian citizens both in Russia and "beyond its boundaries." These words were little noticed at the time, and Russia was still too weak to contemplate foreign aggression, but they were a claim for the future.PUTIN did NOT refer in his speech to individual rights, but his attitude on the subject became clear three months later. On August 12, two massive explosions occurred on board the nuclear submarine Kursk during a training exercise, and it sank to the bottom of the Barents Sea. Most of the 118 crew members were killed instantly, BUT 23 survivors managed to flee to a rear compartment, where they tapped out desperate calls for help on the submarine's hull. The entire world was transfixed by the drama of the trapped Russian sailors, BUT for FOUR days, PUTIN, unwilling to admit weakness, REFUSED offers of foreign help. PUTIN ONLY relented in the face of worldwide outrage. The first Norwegian rescuers reached the Kursk on August 20. TRAGICALLY, by that time it was TOO late. The ship was flooded and the entire crew was dead because of PUTIN'S arrogance.Later, when asked by Mr Larry King on CNN what happened to the Kursk, PUTIN said only "It sank," giving an EERIE smile ... It was an OMINOUS sign of PUTIN'S indifference to suffering that would be a hallmark of PUTIN'S years ahead.The Less You Know, the Better You Sleep: Russia's Road to Terror and Dictatorship under YELTSIN & PUTINAuthor: Mr David SatterPublisher: YALE UNIVERSITY PRESS EERIE 怪異而令人恐懼的inaugural address 就職演說departure 偏離，背離，脫離ostensibly 表面上地；假稱地；假託地implicitly: in a way that is suggested but not communicated directlyclaim 權利，所有權contemplate 盤算；沈思，冥想aggression 侵略；侵犯；攻擊；挑釁claim 聲明；說法；斷言flee (尤指因危險或恐懼而) 逃跑compartment 分隔廂，艙；隔間，包廂tap (常指連續) 輕拍，輕叩，輕敲desperate (因絕望而) 拼命的，不顧一切的hull 船體；船身transfix 使不能動彈；使呆住relent 不再拒絕；變溫和；變寬容outrage 憤慨，義憤arrogance 傲慢；狂妄自大；趾高氣揚OMINOUS 惡兆的；不祥的；不吉利的indifference 漠不關心，冷淡；不感興趣hallmark 特徵，特點

【轉載】On September 9, shortly after midnight, a bomb exploded in the basement of a building at 19 Guryanova Street, in a working-class area in the southeast part of the city. The central section of the building was obliterated, leaving the left and right stairwells standing on each side of a gaping hole. Fires raged for hours under the rubble. "It's like hell underneath," one rescuer said. "Even if they survived the blast, they would have BEEN burned alive." In the end, 100 people were killed and 690 injured. PUTIN blamed the bombing on Chechen rebels ... The PUTIN'S FSB announced that items removed from the scene showed traces of TNT and HEXOGEN, a powerful military explosive. (HOWEVER, HEXOGEN is the reactive agent for a NEW generation of artillery shells in Russia, i.e. NOT present in Chenchnya. Besides, there is ONLY one factory that produces HEXOGEN. It is in the Perm oblast and it is tightly guarded by PUTIN'S FSB. Every gram is registered.)

adapted from:
The Less You Know, the Better You Sleep: Russia's Road to Terror and Dictatorship under YELTSIN & PUTIN

【轉載】Four days later, on September 13, an explosion at 6 Kashirskoye Highway in Moscow flattened a nine-story brick apartment building, turning it into a pile of rubble. To add to the horror, the explosion took place at 5 AM, when almost all of the residents were asleep ... The death toll was eventually established at 124, with 7 injured.

On September 16, the terror spread. With funerals of the Moscow victims still going on, a truck bomb exploded in Volgodonsk. The blast ripped off the facade of a nine-story apartment building. The dead bodies of eighteen people, including two children, were pulled from the rubble. Eighty-nine were hospitalized. This explosion, like the one on Kashirskoye Highway, took place at 5 AM. The psychological shock was so great that afterward hundreds of people were unwilling to sleep in their homes and insisted on spending the night outdoors. The bomb left a crater 11.5 feet deep and forty to fifty feet wide. Parts of the vehicle that carried the bomb were dispersed over a radius of nearly a mile.

【轉載】At 8:30 PM on September 22, Mr Alexei Kartofelnikov returned home to his apartment in Ryazan, a city 120 miles southeast of Moscow, after a weekend at his dacha. He noticed a white Lada parked in front of the building at 14/16 Novoselov Street with a male passenger in the back seat. The last two numbers on the car's license plates were covered with pieces of paper that had "62," the code for Ryazan, written on them. Mr Kartofelnikov went up to his apartment and called the police. His daughter, Ms Yulia, a twenty-three-year-old medical intern, went out onto the balcony and watched as a man emerged from the basement, checked his watch, and got into the car, where two people were waiting. In the meantime, another resident, Mr Vladimir Vasiliev, returned and also noticed the car. The piece of paper with "62" on the rear license plate had now fallen off so that the number on the car's plate was different from the number on the front. He also called the police.

When the police arrived, Ms Yulia insisted that they check the basement. The basement had been used as a toilet by local derelicts, so they did not want to go down there. But finally agreed, went down the steps, and immediately ran back up shouting, "There's a bomb." The building was soon engulfed in chaos. Police began going door to door telling residents to leave. People took babies out of bathtubs, grabbed documents, and threw on overcoats. Those too ill or weak to leave the building were left behind.

As residents watched on the street, the police, including Mr Yuri Tkachenko, the head of the local bomb squad, entered the basement. Mr Tkachenko disconnected a detonator and timing device and then tested three sacks of a white crystalline substance with a portable gas analyzer. The contents of the sacks tested positive for HEXOGEN, the same substance used in the previous apartment bombings. There NOW no question that someone had tried to blow up the building.

The sacks were taken out of the basement at around 1:30 AM and driven away by the FSB. But the FSB agents forgot to take away the highly professional military detonator, which was left in the hands of the bomb squad. It was photographed and time-stamped the next day.

P.S. HEXOGEN is the reactive agent for a NEW generation of artillery shells in Russia, i.e. NOT present in Chenchnya. Besides, there is ONLY one factory that produces HEXOGEN. It is in the Perm oblast and it is tightly guarded by PUTIN'S FSB. Every gram is registered.
adapted from:
The Less You Know, the Better You Sleep: Russia's Road to Terror and Dictatorship under YELTSIN & PUTIN

The white Lada was found around dawn, abandoned in a parking lot. A short time later, a call to Moscow was made from a public telephone in Ryazan, and the operator who connected the call caught a fragment of the conversation. The caller said there was no way to get out of town undetected. The voice on the other end replied, "Split up and each of you make your own way out." The operator reported the call to the police, who traced the number. TO THEIR SURPRISE, it belonged NOT to Chechen terrorists but to PUTIN'S FSB. The terrorists were soon arrested, and to the stupefaction of the police, produced FSB identification. PUTIN'S FSB ordered them released.

PUTIN'S FSB now had NO choice but to offer some explanation. On Friday, September 24, PUTIN'S FSB director Nikolai Patrushev came out of a Kremlin meeting and announced that the evacuation of the building had been part of a training exercise.

Patrushev's statement contradicted what PUTIN'S authorities had been saying for two days. On the morning of the 23rd, Alexander Sergeev, the head of the Ryazan FSB, had appeared on television and congratulated residents on being saved from a terrorist attack. Vladimir Rushailo, the interior minister, announced on national television that an attempted terrorist act had been foiled. BUT now Patrushev said the incident was a test.

These events provoked anger in Ryazan, where people had spent the night of September 23 sleeping outdoors. Journalists raised the possibility that those responsible for the four previous bombings were also NOT Chechens but PUTIN'S FSB. Society, however, did not react in an organized fashion. The day after the bomb was discovered, PUTIN'S aircraft began bombing the Grozny airport, in Chechnya, and on October 1, PUTIN'S troops moved across the border, launching the second Chechen War.

... The second invasion of Chechnya was carried out methodically and seemingly with success. In its wake, PUTIN'S popularity soared. Only 2 percent of the population had favored him for the presidency in August, and in September just 4 percent. In October, the number reached 21 percent. In November, PUTIN was favored for the presidency by 45 percent of Russians, far more than preferred any other candidate. It was now clear that there would be no need to introduce emergency rule and postpone the elections. PUTIN could win on his own, with the help of a PUTIN-made war.

PUTIN'S forces easily advanced over the Chechen lowlands to the Terek River. They then stopped and conducted strikes into other parts of Chechnya. In December, they crossed the Terek, surrounded Grozny, and began a DELIBERATELY massive bombardment that left the city looking like HELL.

In early October, I met again with the operative who had warned me of a massive provocation coming in Moscow; he said the apartment bombings were that provocation. This was NOT an isolated view. Many Russian newspapers were making the SAME charge, especially the mass circulation Moskovsky Komsomolets, the newspaper Novaya Vremya, and the weekly newspaper Obshchaya Gazeta. It was characteristic of Moscow's mood under YELTSIN that after eight years in which the country had been run for the benefit of gangsters and oligarchs, the idea that the authorities had organized a terrorist act against their OWN people seemed NOT ONLY plausible but VERY likely.

"The perpetrators," my friend said, "planted the [Guryanov Street] bomb in a workers' area, NOT in an elite area in the center of town. If the perpetrators were Chechens and the purpose was to make a political point, blowing up ordinary people was senseless."

"If you look at a map of Moscow, you see that for a terrorist, the choice of place was idiotic. A terrorist should be able to get out quickly. Pechatnike [where the Guryanov Street building was located] is a peninsula. On three sides is the Moscow River and the ONLY way out is Ryazansky Prospekt."

"This is also the poorest region of Moscow. It has the cheapest apartments and the worst ecology. The second blast was on the Kashirskoye Highway, also among the cheapest, flimsiest houses in Moscow."

"The explosive that was used was HEXOGEN. This is the reactive agent for a NEW generation of artillery shells in Russia (i.e. HEXOGEN was NOT present in Chechenya.). There is ONLY one factory that produces HEXOGEN. It is in the Perm oblast and it is tightly guarded by PUTIN'S FSB. Every gram is registered.

"in order to produce this kind of destruction, HEXOGEN has to be weighed and the bomb strategically placed. This can be done only by specialists. The explosives were put in precise locations, and the buildings collapsed like a house of cards."

I was impressed. The bombings had created terror in Russia and then, having provided a so-called justification for a new war in Chechnya, they (i.e. the apartment bombings) abruptly stopped. At the same time, the sites were cleared of debris, including body parts, within three or four days, effectively destroying the crime scenes.

operative 密探；特工人員

provocation 挑釁

charge 指責，責備，批評

oligarch 寡頭政治家；寡頭統治集團成員

plausible 貌似真實 (或可信) 的

perpetrators 犯罪者；行兇者；作惡者

idiotic 白癡似的，愚蠢的

ecology (通常指一個特定區域的) 生態；生態學

abruptly 突然地；意外地

This is PUTIN (8-13) are adapted from:
The Less You Know, the Better You Sleep: RUSSIA'S ROAD TO TERROR AND DICTATORSHIP UNDER YELTSIN AND PUTIN

Author: Mr DAVID SATTER
Publisher: YALE UNIVERSITY PRESS

In short, PUTIN and HIS cronies bombed their own people so as to launch a PUTIN-made war in Chechnya, inflating PUTIN'S popularity and gained the presidency -- The Less You Know, the Better You Sleep, actually !